Taboo words interfere with language processing, e.g. responses are slowed when producing picture names paired with taboo distractors and identifying taboo words' font colour in Stroop tasks. Interference has been linked with taboo words' emotional properties, specifically high arousal. Because some taboo words are humorous, which is also arousing (Shafto et al., 2024b), the present research explored whether taboo Stroop interference is moderated by humour. Participants completed an online Stroop colour identification task for taboo and neutral words, identifying their font colour via keypress as quickly as possible. In Experiment 1, taboo words possessed a range of humor ratings based on previous norms and were intermixed with neutral words (mixed design). In Experiment 2, words with different levels of tabooness (high, low) and humor (high, low) were presented in sets corresponding to these categories (blocked design). Taboo Stroop interference occurred in both experiments, where font colours were identified more slowly for taboo words than neutral words, and humor affected taboo Stroop interference in the blocked design: Interference effects were smaller for taboo words high in humor than ones low in humor. These findings suggest that humor can attenuate the degree to which taboo words command attention during colour identification.

Separate domains of research have previously shown that word retrieval performance is reduced with increased anxiety, and that increased mindfulness is associated with reduced anxiety. Adult aging has been shown to affect word retrieval, mindfulness, and anxiety, but the inter-relationships among these variables have not been previously tested. The present research examined whether individual differences in dispositional mindfulness and anxiety relate to word retrieval performance across adulthood. Participants (N = 207) ages 20-78 completed an online definition-naming task along with several self-report measures related to mindfulness and anxiety. Increased age was positively related to increased production of correct responses and to increased dispositional mindfulness, and negatively related to state anxiety, trait anxiety, and anxiety specifically related to communication. For the entire sample, measures related to mindfulness and anxiety were intercorrelated in the expected ways. We divided participants into groups of young, middle-aged, and older adults, and found that anxiety and mindfulness scores were only associated with correct word retrieval in older adults; there were no relationships in young or middle-aged participants. The primary conclusion is that dispositional mindfulness can attenuate the negative effects of state anxiety on word retrieval performance, but only for older adults. Study results contribute important empirical, theoretical, and practical information regarding mindfulness, anxiety, word retrieval, and aging.

Emotion can have a profound effect on language processing, and taboo words have been increasingly used in research as highly emotional, negatively valenced stimuli. However, because taboo words as a lexical category are socially constructed and semantically idiosyncratic, they may also have complex emotional characteristics. This complexity may not be fully considered by researchers using taboo words as research stimuli. This study gathered tabooness, humor, and arousal ratings to provide a resource for researchers to better understand the sources and characteristics of the strong emotions generated by taboo words. A total of 411 participants aged 18-83 were recruited via online platforms, and all participants rated the same 264 words on tabooness, humor, and arousal. Analyses indicated that tabooness and humor ratings were positively related to each other, and both were predicted by arousal ratings. The set of ratings included here provides a tool for researchers using taboo stimuli, and our findings highlight methodological considerations while broadening our understanding of the cognitive and linguistic nature of highly emotional language.

Older adults have even greater difficulty learning name-face associations than young adults, although many variables reflecting properties of the names have been shown to affect young and older adults' name learning similarly. Older adults' name-face association learning was compared for names with high-frequency (HF) first syllables versus names with low-frequency (LF) first syllables. Twenty-eight adults ages 65 to 80 learned five names with HF first syllables and five names with LF first syllables in association with 10 new faces over repeated testing rounds with feedback. Participants learned more name-face associations when the names had HF first syllables than LF first syllables. Findings indicate that older adults benefit from increased frequency of phonological segments within a word on a task other than word retrieval and are consistent with a theoretical framework that accounts for learning new name-face associations, the effects of linguistic properties of the names, and ageing.

Emotional properties of words can profoundly affect their processing, depending on both the valence (pleasantness) and the degree of arousal (excitation) that the word elicits. Words that are strongly emotionally arousing (such as taboo words) can interfere with subsequent language processing (White & Abrams, 2021). However, little is known about whether or how aging affects the processing of highly arousing language. The present study provides a characterization of how adults across the lifespan evaluate highly arousing language with a simple rating task that included taboo words, which have previously been used to examine lexical interference caused by arousal, and humorous words, which are also highly arousing without being negatively valenced. While arousal ratings were strongly positively correlated with both tabooness and humor ratings for young adults, these relationships weakened with age and overall arousal ratings were lower for middle-aged and older adults compared to young adults. Age effects cannot be readily accounted for by age-related differences in psychosocial variables such as self-reported profanity avoidance or religiosity. The effect of age on arousal should be considered in the design of studies examining age-related changes in emotional language processing. Furthermore, age differences in arousal should be considered as a potential mechanism in studies exploring emotional language processing across adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

It is harder to learn a proper name than a common noun in association with a new face, and low-frequency (LF) or rare surnames are harder to learn than high-frequency (HF) or common surnames. A separate body of research has shown that words containing HF phonological components can be easier to retrieve and produce than words with LF phonological components. This study tested for a "downstream" benefit of increased syllable frequency (independent of name frequency) on name-face association learning: surnames with HF first syllables were predicted to be learned more easily than those with LF first syllables. Participants were tasked with learning 5 names with HF first syllables and 5 names with LF first syllables in association with 10 unfamiliar faces over repeated testing rounds with feedback. People learned more names containing HF than LF first syllables, demonstrating a benefit of increased phonological frequency to name learning. Findings support an interactive activation model that accounts for name-face association learning as well as phonological frequency effects on production, along with many other aspects of memory and language.

Background and ObjectiveMindsets about stress can be altered so that people interpret stress as either a positive or negative force. We exposed participants to a stress mindset intervention to test its effects on a challenging speech production task. Design and MethodParticipants (N = 60) were randomly assigned to a stress mindset condition. In the stress-is-enhancing (SIE) condition, they viewed a brief video that characterized stress as a positive force that benefits performance. In the stress-is-debilitating (SID) condition, the video characterized stress as a negative force that should be avoided. Each participant completed a self-report measure of stress mindset, performed a psychological stressor task, and then repeatedly produced tongue twisters aloud. Speech errors and articulation time were scored for the production task. ResultsThe manipulation check confirmed that stress mindsets were altered after viewing the videos. Participants in the SIE condition articulated the phrases more quickly than those in the SID condition without an accompanying increase in errors. ConclusionsA stress mindset manipulation affected speech production. This finding indicates that one way to mitigate the negative effects of stress on speech production is to instantiate beliefs that stress is a positive force that can enhance performance.

Mindfulness can reduce anxiety and improve attentional control, so we tested for relationships between mindfulness and performance on word retrieval tasks. In Study 1, college students experienced a 10-min mindful breathing exercise or control condition, and participants in the mindful breathing condition correctly named more pictures than participants in the control condition. Participants also completed a self-report measure of dispositional mindfulness, but scores were unrelated to picture naming performance. In Study 2, online participants completed the mindfulness measure and attempted to produce target words that fit definitions and reported their tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states. Neither TOT rate nor correct responding correlated with mindfulness scores, replicating Study 1 results with a larger, more varied sample. Results indicate that a mindful breathing exercise can facilitate word retrieval but that self-reported dispositional mindfulness does not positively affect word retrieval.

This study tested recall of proper names versus other details of a crime in incidental learning conditions designed to parallel recall when an "earwitness" reports what he or she overheard from someone discussing a crime. Participants heard an audio recording of someone discussing details of a crime he had committed, and they then completed filler tasks designed to mislead them as to the study's true purpose. After this short delay, participants had particularly poor recall for names in association with roles in the crime compared to other details about the crime. Their name errors sometimes implicated innocent people, a disturbing finding given the potential ramifications for people incriminated by witnesses reporting hearsay. Somewhat reassuringly, participants frequently did not provide a guess for the name when they were uncertain about who did what, and they reported reduced confidence in their name recall, with particularly low confidence when they recalled incorrect name information. Findings establish the pronounced difficulty of proper name learning in incidental learning conditions, and results suggest that earwitness testimony involving name recall should be treated with particular caution.

Earthquake early warning (EEW) systems have the potential to facilitate the delivery of lifesaving information to individuals in the path of damaging shaking before it reaches them. While much attention has been devoted to measuring the technological feasibility in terms of reach, accuracy, and latency of EEW message delivery, one additional aspect that merits considerable attention is the effectiveness of alerts themselves; do they deliver actionable information that can lead to protective actions taken by message receivers? In this project, we investigated individual responses to a simulated EEW message in a laboratory environment. We employed eye-tracking technology to evaluate visual attention to specific message features; measured behavioral responses to the EEW message (i.e., the participants' ability to perform the recommended actions correctly); and collected self-reported perceptions of the messages (including participants’ intent to act in response to future EEW messages). We manipulated two variables selected to be likely to affect visual attention, behavioral responses, and message perceptions: 1) prior exposure to the relevant protective actions, and 2) the presence of informational icons about the protective actions within the message. We found that prior exposure to protective actions is the strongest predictor of behavioral response and message perceptions; however, the inclusion of informational icons had little effect on our results, suggesting a need for further research testing. The results of this study should inform recommendations for message design and public education and training, all of which are critical to the success of EEW.

Tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) are known to increase in frequency across adulthood, but there is wide variability in older adults' TOT rates, suggesting that individual difference factors contribute to TOT incidence. We investigated the role of affect by examining the relationship between self-reported anxiety and depression symptoms and the frequency of TOTs during a laboratory task. Participants were young, middle-aged and older adults in a population-based sample of adults aged 18-87. Increased anxiety was associated with fewer TOTs for the middle-aged group but more TOTs for the older adult group. There was no relationship between anxiety and TOTs for younger adults and no relationships between depression symptoms and TOT incidence for any age group. We discuss our results in terms of attentional control theory, which provides an explanation of how age may affect the relationship between anxiety and TOTs.

The notion that speech becomes less fluent during stressful speaking conditions has received little empirical test, and no research has tested this relationship in older adult participants. We analyzed speeches produced during the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) or during a less stressful placebo (pTSST) version of the task. We measured young and older adults' speech fillers (e.g., um), unfilled pauses (at least 1 s in duration), and other disfluencies (e.g., repetitions, repairs). Neither young nor older adult participants rated themselves as having greater stress in the TSST than pTSST condition, but behavioral effects were obtained. Participants in the TSST condition produced more mid-phrase speech fillers and unfilled pauses than participants in the pTSST condition. Young adults produced more unfilled pauses than older adults overall, and older adults produced more mid-phrase fillers than young adults. Critically, age group interacted with experimental condition, such that older speakers produced disproportionately more mid-phrase fillers than young adults in the TSST compared to the pTSST condition. In sum, the negative effects of the TSST on fluency were generally similar across age, but this specific age-related increase in mid-phrase fillers indicates that older adults' word retrieval may have been particularly negatively affected. Findings are generally consistent with previous research and add to understanding of how factors internal to the speaker (i.e., demographic, personality, and cognitive variables) and factors external to the speaker (i.e., variables regarding the situation, context, or content of speech) combine to affect speech fluency.

We tested the frequent assumption that the difficulty of word retrieval increases when a speaker is being observed and evaluated. We modified the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) so that participants believed that its evaluative observation components continued throughout the duration of a subsequent word retrieval task, and measured participants' reported tip of the tongue (TOT) states. Participants in this TSST condition experienced more TOTs than participants in a comparable, placebo TSST condition in which there was no suggestion of evaluative observation. This experiment provides initial evidence confirming the assumption that evaluative observation by a third party can be disruptive to word retrieval. We interpret our findings by proposing an extension to a well-supported theoretical model of TOTs.

Abstract The questions of whether and why language processes change in healthy aging require complicated answers. Although comprehension appears to be more stable across adulthood than does production, there is evidence for age-related changes and also for constancy within both input and output components of language. Further, these changes can be considered at various levels of the language hierarchy, such as sensory input, words, sentences, and discourse. As concluded in several other comprehensive reviews, older adults’ language production ability declines much more noticeably than does their comprehension, presumably because comprehension is able to benefit from contextual processing in a way that production cannot. Specifically, lexical and orthographic retrieval become more difficult during normal aging, and these changes appear to represent the most noticeable age-related declines in language production. Some theories of age-related decline focus on global deterioration of cognitive function, whereas other theories predict changes in specific processes related to language function. Both types of theories have received empirical support as applied to language performance, although additional theoretical development is still needed to capture the patterns of effects. Further, in order to truly understand how cognitive aging impacts the ability to understand and produce language, it is necessary to examine how age-related shifts in goals, expertise, and compensatory strategies influence language processes. There are important implications of research on language and cognitive aging, in that language can play a role in physical health and psychological well-being. In summary, our review of the existing literature on language and cognitive aging supports previous claims that language ability is asymmetrically impacted by age, with smaller overall effects of aging on comprehension than production processes.

We compared young and older adults' speech during an error detection task, with some pictures containing visual errors and anomalies and other pictures error-free. We analyzed three disfluency types: mid-phrase speech fillers (e.g., It's a little, um, girl), repetitions (e.g., He's trying to catch the- the birds), and repairs (e.g., She- you can see her legs). Older adults produced more mid-phrase fillers than young adults only when describing pictures containing errors. These often reflect word retrieval problems and represent clear disruptions to fluency, so this interaction indicates that the need to form and maintain representations of novel information can specifically compromise older adults' speech fluency. Overall, older adults produced more repetitions and repairs than young adults, regardless of picture type, indicating general age-related increases in these disfluencies. The obtained patterns are discussed in the context of the Transmission Deficit Hypothesis and other approaches to age-related changes in speech fluency.

OBJECTIVE:We tested the claim that age-related increases in knowledge interfere with word retrieval, leading to word finding failures. We did this by relating a measure of crystallized intelligence to tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states and picture naming accuracy. METHOD:Participants were from a large (N = 708), cross-sectional (aged 18-88 years), population-based sample from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience cohort (Cam-CAN; www.cam-can.com). They completed (a) the Spot-the-Word Test (STW), a measure of crystallized intelligence in which participants circled the real word in word/nonword pairs, (b) a TOT-inducing task, and (c) a picture naming task. RESULTS:Age and STW independently predicted TOTs, with higher TOTs for older adults and for participants with lower STW scores. Tests of a moderator model examining interactions between STW and age indicated that STW was a significant negative predictor of TOTs in younger adults, but with increasing age, the effect size gradually approached zero. Results using picture naming accuracy replicated these findings. DISCUSSION:These results do not support the hypothesis that lifelong knowledge acquisition leads to interference that causes an age-related increase in TOTs. Instead, crystallized intelligence supports successful word retrieval, although this relationship weakens across adulthood.

We tested age effects on repetition blindness (RB), defined as the reduced probability of reporting a target word following presentation of the same word in a rapidly presented list. We also tested age effects on homophone blindness (HB), in which the first word is a homophone of the target word rather than a repeated word. Thirty young and 28 older adults viewed rapidly presented lists of words containing repeated, homophone, or unrepeated word pairs and reported all of the words immediately after each list. Older adults exhibited a greater degree of RB and HB than young adults using a conditional scoring method that provides certainty that blindness has occurred. The existence of RB and HB for both age groups, and increased blindness for older compared to young adults, supports predictions of a binding theory that has successfully accounted for a wide range of phenomena in cognitive aging.